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Ray Dalio: “This Is The Most Important Economic, Political And Social Issue Of Our Time”

Every quarter, the Fed’s Flow of Funds report discloses – among many other things – the total U.S. household net worth, and every quarter for the past two years this number has steadily gone up, hitting fresh all time highs with every new release, most recently $96.2 trillion, to widespread cheers from both the financial press and the public, as well as the administration.

However, as we show every quarter, this aggregate number is largely meaningless in providing a status update on the financial state of the broader US population, as it masks a gaping chasm between the haves, or the top 10% of US society – those who benefit the most from this mostly financial-asset based increase in net worth, and the have nots, or bottom 90%, who remain largely locked out from such gains.

In fact, it was the Fed’s own Triennial Survey of Consumer Finances which disclosed just how skewed this net worth distribution had become: